MLK Jr @ UT

A statue of Martin Luther King Jr on campus. Note that this statue has FOUR (4!) security cameras on it at all times. The statues of various white guys have ZERO (0).

This was taken in February; the construction in the background is changed and the sky is always sunny these days.

Tubing the Comal

Today= 3rd tubing trip. 2nd on the Comal which is one excellent river for tubing.

I cannot find any photos that do its glory justice but here are a few attempts by others (all images found from google searches of "comal tubing" or "texas tubes comal")

Note: Today's High Temp in New Braunfels (where we went tubing) was 107 F.

Yes, I repeat, Yankees:

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

107' F.

Also known as: TOO HOT TO LIVE.

Roach.

A roach invaded my apartment in mid June. I flipped out.

Now, we obviously have roaches up north. But uh, homies? This of a bug was almost 2" long in his body alone. With his creepy antennae? Ew. I don't know. I don't want to know. He gives me the shivers.

In these photos this nasty creature is taking his last breaths* while tucked under an overhang by the cabinet.

Ew.

*Not really his last breaths since right after taking these I tried to kill it with a paper-towel covered textbook & missed. Then he ran away. After 5 terrifying minutes or so, I found him again (while on my way to duct tape my room so that no roaches could crawl under it. Because I'm clever like that.) and that time, succeeded in murdering him.

And then of course I spent hours googling how to get rid of them & generally terrifying myself as well as scrubbing the site of its death for near eternity so that its fellow friends wouldn't find it & get pissed & have super countless amounts of babies.

I bought Borax & showered the apartment in it. I made 2 roach traps (the interwebs taught me how). They stayed up for 4 days; the Borax for 2 weeks. No roach sightings since...

Texas sized bugs are absolutely disgusting... Roaches in particular.

E-Rock: The Intro

Look, its Enchanted Rock!

So once upon a time I went along with a group of friends to go "climb E-rock". I had no idea with this entailed but willingly and unknowingly ended up on a journey in which I tried to conquer two of my top 5 fears: heights & small spaces (the other 3 include crabs, death, and swans).

E-rock is a national park with huge rocks that you can climb, hike, walk, etc. The views are gorgeous, the sky's huge, and some slopes are terribly steep. There are also caves in which you can go spelunking. More on that later. 

It was a gorgeous March day when the ten or so of us adventured out beyond Fredricksburg. It was also what I at that point considered hot. That probably meant like 80-85 

and sunny (oh what I'd do for that weather these days....). I wanted like 20 Nalgenes but had to carry them so I settled for 1.

2 posts to follow: Scary Steep Slope & Scary Spelunking. Stay tuned.*

*Okay, so since I'm backdating this since I was lazy for months & am now updating... those 2 posts are marked 6/18 and 6/16 & are below this one...

Scary Steep Slope

Like I said: I had no. freaking. clue. what I was getting myself into when I happily agreed to go to E-rock. The "are you afraid of heights? small spaces?" questions gave me a hint but I figured it couldn't be that bad. Ha!

My friends are crazy. They apparently like to climb the steepest slopes possible 

without equipment because what fun would it be if you weren't clinging to a rock for dear life?

At least they learned quickly to not tell me where we were heading next since each slope was steeper & more terrifying than the next. 

In this photo, 3 my friends can be seen at

various levels. Obviously I was somewhat behind, along with 2 others.

I was significantly slower than everyone else because I spent huge amounts of time in one spot, trembling, and yelling "DONT TOUCH ME!" because while I was frozen in spot, I did not want "help". Also, holding back tears and wondering how the eff I was ever going to make it up there. Repeatedly. There were 2 huge slopes. 

Scary Spelunking

 I don't like small spaces. I don't like them in the dark. I don't like spaces so small you can't wear your backpack because it won't fit.

Add going underground on a mountain where nobody monitors, nobody knows who went in or who left or who died or is waiting down there with a gun? No. No me gusta.

Peer pressure. I went in.

Dude. Cave = terrifying. Like 10 of us and 3 flashlights. My friends were great about letting me be near a light (because of the yelling that would come otherwise? Perhaps).

Started off with a massive jump/slide that you barely fit through. I wanted OUT but there's no way I'd get back up there. 3 lights. That meant quite a few of us were in the dark more often than comfortable.

It was going okay, I was no longer about to pass out from terror, when one of the guys fell and gashed his head on a rock. Once we got flashlights over there and another guy fixed him up with a first aid kit one of them had so intelligently brought and I checked him out, we decided he & at least 1 more needed to go back up rather than through the gave. 4 of 'em went, leaving 5 of us in the cave. I lost it for a moment because I wanted OUT but it was simpler to stay.

It got kinda awesome, actually. It was still scary but we had 2 flashlights and 5 of us so the ratio was better and after a little bit, I chilled out somewhat. I did want to kill 2 friends when they urged us to NOT follow the occasional painted arrow - if you don't follow, you can end up god knows where or at a dead end and who knows if you can climb back up.

Unfortunately most of the photos from this have people in them & I don't want to post pics of people that you can recognize. One of the 2 people who took photos was in the group that went back up early on after the injury so there aren't many photos to choose from either.

This first pic is from near the end of our spelunking adventure; there's an exit about... 30 feet above his head. He tried to climb it but failed. We went out a different "exit" that was a do-able climb.

The second pic is from the beginning. He's going down that hole where his feet are in the picture. He's 6'1". It was not an easy fit.

Twistah

Oh hey, look! It's Cait's first tornado warning!

At one point the weather people announced a tornado had touched down in Round Rock and was heading Southeast in I-35. Hey, guess where I live? Southeast on I-35!

I was also online during this time (because what else would you do when a tornado is on its way?!) and a line of my gchat went something like:

Me: Don't worry, I'm still alive.

Other person: Ya I figured you'd say something before you died.

Needless to say, the tornado(es) did not make it to Austin.

Creeperbird

Creeper bird on Town Lake (aka Lady Bird Lake or Towne Lake. Everything in this city has 2+ names.

Ended up seeing a similar one at the race venue in Tennessee in April and May. That one was viscous!